SOURCE: Calhoun, Thomas O. “George Wither: Origins and Consequences of a Loose Poetics.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 16, no. 2 (summer 1974): 263-79.

In the following essay, Calhoun defends Wither's experimentation with a loose style of poetry while acknowledging that the results he achieved were not always praiseworthy.

Why tell me, is it possible the Mind A Forme in all Deformitie should find? 

—Drayton, England's Heroicall Epistles

The loose style, be it that of Rabelais, Burton, Traherne, Henry Miller, or William Burroughs, has traditionally tormented literary critics, most of whom, it must be conceded, are professedly or secretly schoolmen. Apologists for the style have appeared from time to time, and I wish to place myself among their ranks in order to clarify and defend the principles on which the loose style is based, though not to praise unconditionally the literary results: in this case the poetry of George Wither...